Food Theory: You Are Drinking Your Champagne WRONG!

hey lead editor dan i'm uh trying to find that one meme of leonardo dicaprio for today's food theory episode sure oh i was thinking the um the one where he's holding a drink this one the other one this one the other other one i guess this one wow there is a surprising number this one no this one no this one there it is great what version this one [Music] hello internet welcome to food theory the show whose new year's resolution is to stop overthinking everything and start over overthinking everything theorists it's time for a new year and even if the previous one has left me feeling like the revenant leo it always feels good to strike out into the new one feeling like gatsby leo and for many ringing in the new year means one thing making out with strangers at the stroke of midnight but with health concerns at an all-time high i think everyone's instead gonna be ringing in 2021 by choosing option two a champagne toast whether it's new year's graduation your wedding or just your tuesday night champagne is the de facto drink for celebration unless of course for me and then it's a crisp diet coke but here's the thing friends as you prepare to your glasses at 12 o'clock be aware you're doing it wrong no really hate to burst your bubbly here but there is a high likelihood that you are drinking your champagne wrong and don't feel bad it's not like it's your fault humanity's been botching the way they appreciate this drink since the era of louis xvi so what are we getting wrong and how do we correct for it well bottoms up theorists by the time you get to the bottom of this tall cool glass of knowledge you're gonna start feeling a bit woozy so hand those keys over to a designated subscriber before things really get out of hand our story begins with marie antoinette's left breast say what you're that right friends i'm not out here risking demonetization just for kicks it's long been legend that louis xvi had a glass designed in the shape of said body part as a gift weird gift but okay you do you louie that glass became known as the coupe glass and became the primary vessel of drinking champagne at the time now keep in mind that this legend's actually been told the same way with the boobs of a couple of louis the 15th mistresses napoleon's wife and a whole bunch of other women you get the idea lots of people want to claim the coop in the name of their girlfriend's chesticles in actuality the origins of the coop class can be traced back to england in 1663 when it was invented as a vessel for sparkling wine keep in mind all champagne is sparkling wine but not all sparkling wine is technically champagne in order to be considered champagne the sparkling wine has to come from the champagne region of northern france it didn't take long for the coop class to catch on with the french royalty so i mean if it's good enough for kings it should be good enough for us to drink champagne out of right well that depends on how much you appreciate bubbles the bubbles in your champagne and all sparkling wine for that matter are incredibly delicate so maintaining those bubbles long enough for you to actually enjoy them is gonna be difficult but also essential in order to have the proper imbibing experience what do i mean by that well here is a quick overview of how sparkling wine is made the grapes are picked pressed and filtered so that the skins stems and seeds are removed then the grape juice is mixed with yeast and stored in vats so that the sugars are converted into ethanol aka alcohol and carbon dioxide at this point champagne is just normal wine because the co2 has had a chance to escape out into the air the base wine is then blended with other wines made of grapes from different vineyards to create the perfect balance of sugar acidity and flavor now comes the step that actually makes it sparkling wine the second fermentation process the nice blended wine is mixed with yeast and sugar distributed into bottles and corked the yeast and sugar react to create co2 or carbon dioxide bubbles but this time the co2 can't escape it's trapped in an airtight corked bottle so with nowhere to go it instead dissolves into the wine the concentration of dissolved co2 creates pressure but as long as the bottle's closed you don't see any of the bubbles that's because the gas in the wine and the gas in the space under the cork is in equilibrium when you remove the cork a bunch of oxygen rushes in and throws off the balance of pressure so to try and get that balance back the champagne releases its co2 through bubble formation and diffusion which is just a fancy way of saying that the co2 molecules are going to move from the liquid into the surrounding air now think about this the more air that the champagne is exposed to the more co2 it has to release in order to maintain equilibrium with atmosphere so the more air you expose champagne to the faster it's going to release all those bubbles and go flat otherwise known as degassing which can we just start a petition right now to change the word fart into d gas i'm sorry my body had to de-gas itself anyway a coop's bowl is shallow and wide so the wine has a large surface area that was great for louis xvi and his subjects who slammed glasses of champagne like frat boys crushed beers but not so great if you're actually trying to enjoy the wine without any place for bubbles to form and a lot of room to breathe most of the co2 in a coupe glass is gonna be released through diffusion since it's shallow and wide the wine can just release big clouds of co2 and just like that it's totally flat our taste buds perceive carbonation as sour so flat champagne just ends up tasting dull and overly sweet so about a half century after the coop glass was invented the champagne flute hits the scene unlike the coupe glass the flute was designed to help sustain the effervescence of sparkling wine via its long skinny column basically the inverse shape of a coop glass see the opening of the flute exposes only a small portion of the champagne surface area to air so there's less space to release co2 through diffusion that means that the champagne has limited opportunity to degas through its surface and instead has to rely on bubble formation it's pretty clever right who knew that so much science actually went into these glasses but it doesn't stop there if you've ever had a nice wine flute it's actually holding another secret way down at the bottom of the glass in order for bubbles to form in a glass there have to be pre-existing gas cavities in the glass before the wine is poured these are naturally formed by fibers that stick to the inside of the wall like tiny pockets that are already there before you pour once the wine is poured the carbon dioxide fills the space inside these fibers the carbon dioxide concentrates until it becomes large enough to become buoyant and detached from the cavity in the shape of a bubble flute makers often etch tiny extra cracks or scratches into the bottom of the bowl to artificially create more uniform gas cavities so that the bubbles peter off in a column through the center of the glass so am i saying that you're drinking your champagne wrong if you use a coop is the flute the perfect glass to enjoy champagne well it turns out that there are two sides to every coin and we shouldn't start toasting our victory just yet here's one thing that the flute gets wrong champagne is best when the bubbles are fine but that long distance trip up the glass means that all the bubbles will be a lot more substantial than they would be in a coupe glass so that's a point for team coop on top of that we can't just focus on one bubble at a time in an entire champagne glass one glass of champagne can release 11 million bubbles and it turns out that these bubbles actually serve a purpose the bubbles chase after each other and form what are called bubble trains these trains aren't just for show they actually swirl the wine and mix it for you in your glass this swirling action mixes the champagne and creates distinctive aromas in what's known as the champagne's vortex zone this so-called vortex zone in addition to sounding like a radical place to hold a laser tag party in middle school is actually extremely important for the experience of drinking champagne combined the bubble trains and the fizz make sparkling wine very aromatic and any good wine taster worth their syrah can tell you that smell is one of the most important aspects of the wine tasting experience that lovely bouquet kinda goes to waste in a flute the slim opening prevents your nose from getting a good whiff of the wine especially egregious when you consider that 75 to 95 of all taste can be attributed to your nose but the coop with its wider vortex zone ensures that you'll be able to get a good whiff as you sip so then is the coop the right glass to drink champagne from well the coop is so wide that the whole glass doesn't get mixed and there are dead zones of wine that don't get swirled and that's not all the coop's design makes it ridiculously unstable a heavy wide-brimmed bowl bouncing on top of a spindly piece of glass is attractive but not all that practical when the coop is full you pretty much have to hold it from the bowl to prevent it spilling which means that your body heat is going to warm the champagne really quickly throwing off both its flavor and aroma the flute on the other hand never really requires being held by the bowl preventing your body heat from getting anywhere near the majority of the wine so where does that leave us are a few extra bubbles in a flute worth missing a huge percentage of the actual taste and smell of champagne or is the coop the right way to go forcing you to drink it faster so the champagne doesn't heat up or degas or suffer from all the dead zones really it seems like a lose-lose situation here neither glass seems like the right fit for drinking champagne so if the flute is too skinny and tall and the coop is too short and squat what are we supposed to drink champagne out of who wins the champagne olympics both glasses have been around since at least the 1700s and even now centuries later we haven't managed to pin down a hands-down winner does that mean then that champagne glasses are just a fluctuating fad and society drinks out of whatever it deems cool at the time i can't bring myself to believe that this is a finely crafted wine glass we're talking about not some fad like poodle skirts or pogs totally guilty of pogs by the way what i'm saying is that there has to be a glass that's objectively better than the others at delivering champagne into our mouths as you might imagine this is a hotly hotly debated topic among people in the industry there's no shortage of valid opinions on both sides of the argument but based upon the science that we've covered today the winner has to be the tulip glass that's right folks a new player has entered the game and it's the solution to all of our bubble trouble see the tulip glass is basically a compromise between the coop the flute and the traditional white wine glass and it's gaining popularity with a lot of wine experts for one thing it forces the alcohol aroma to the outside of the glass to hide behind the slim but not two slim rings so that you're only smelling the sweet stuff from the center of the bowl the moderately sized bowl and long stem prevent the champagne from overheating the champagne is exposed to let air in but not quite as much as the coop so the co2 won't diffuse as quickly and finally on the practical side it's taller and is only meant to be filled up halfway so it won't slosh off the sides with every step you take even when you're on glass six and don't get to glass six gatsby isn't toasting to irresponsible drinking choices now certainly not every somali and wine expert out there is prepared to leave behind over three centuries of coop and flute history behind but nonetheless some are pushing the envelope striving every day to achieve the perfect glass and many of those glasses borrow coop and flute attributes alike so there you have it theorists and even if you don't have a tulip glass at your disposal this new year's some wine experts believe that you'll actually have a better experience drinking your champagne from a traditional white wine glass which resembles the tulip glass in many ways than you will from a festive flute but perhaps the sweetest drink of all is knowing that we made it through 2020. so eat drink and be merry this new year and hey why not do it with the help of our sponsor for today's episode hellofresh see one of my resolutions for 2021 is to eat better another is to spend more time with my family thanks to hellofresh i'm getting it done on both fronts what hellofresh does is they send recipes and meal kits straight to your door every week steph and i have found it to be a really great way to get out of our recipe run week in and week out hellofresh is providing us 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think of them i really love hello fresh if you're busy and you find yourself eating fast food all the time and you want to eat better with good varied meals man this is a great solution and honestly for the cost you're just throwing that away at fast food anyway so why not eat better and healthier for almost the same price it's totally worth it anyway check out hellofresh link is down in the description below or like i said hellofresh.com food theory 10 and remember that's just a theory a food theory bon appetit

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 1,586,468

Rating: 4.9424653 out of 5

Keywords: champagne, alcohol, glass, glassware, drinkware, champagne glass, science of champagne glasses, flute, champagne flute, new years, new year, champagne problems, champagne night, champagne lovers, the bachelor champagne, alcohol science, science of alcohol, food theory, food theorists, matpat, game theory, film theory, champagne facts, best champagne, luxury champagne, champagne bubbles, new years countdown 2021, new year's eve, game theorists

Id: lKxig-bHbEE

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Cameran_Nicephore]

anyone else having problems with the promo code not actually getting you the free meals? i tried the coupon, and its still trying to give me a cost of like 20+ dollars. just wanted to check if other people had this issue

[u/NoBeginning2658]

Mmmm yes. Underage drinking habits are going right in 2021 thnx to mat pat. (I’m underage)

[u/picklejuicenightmare]

I'm going to argue that MatPat made a slight error in the video. Not about the champagne, but at the 7:45 mark, MatPat makes the very common claim "that 75% to 95% of all taste can be attributed to your nose."

Regrettably, those numbers don't seem to have much empirical backing, if any. To quote Charles Spencer from his 2015 article in the journal Flavour,

In conclusion, explicitly quantitative claims that somewhere between 75 and 95 % of what is commonly considered as taste really rely on the information transduced by the nose are widespread in the literature, both academic and popular, on food science and flavour perception. However, in the majority of such cases, no specific evidence is cited in support of the claim. What is more, the only article that is, on occasion, cited—specifically, Murphy et al. [5]—fails to provide the kind of support that is needed to robustly support such statements.

Link to article

Nothing too big of a deal, and Spencer agrees that smell perhaps plays a large or even dominant role in taste, but it seems there hasn't been much actual scientific study on the matter.

Just wanted to keep the usual high standards of fact-checking and scientific integrity, which is rightly promoted by MatPat and this community! Also, heck, possible fodder for a channel dedicated to food science.

[u/Gogo726]

Champaggin

[u/Emerald_Dragon2005]

Me who’s 15 :/

[u/tundrat]

That's indeed a surprising amount of interesting science in the drink and glass!
I guess the timing of this video has something to do with the public domain? Which I learned from xkcd.